The Power

In the year since The Day of the Girls, power has begun to be redefined. The initial evidence of women fighting back is the stuff of conventional heroic counterinsurgency movements. In this section, however, women face blowback from men who view the biological advantages of the skein as a genuine threat. Women grow more confident in their assertion of the skein. It is redefined beyond its earlier status as a YouTube novelty meme and more as a legitimate and powerful weapon of defense. Women face men’s growing perception of the skein as a thing to be feared or even controlled. In Margot’s section, there is an account of the proposal being floated by the American government to round up women randomly and test them for the presence of the skein. Then there is the suggestion that understanding the skein might best be done by surgically removing it from selected women. Such procedures smack of the horrors of bioengineering that defined authoritarian governments in the past.

This section also focuses on the emerging power of women who see the skein as an instrument of equality. The skein is brutal, as shown by the graphic depiction of Roxy’s shock by shock killing of the thugs. But here the power serves to right wrongs. Roxy avenges the brutal killing of her mother; mobs of women in Saudi Arabia, long seen as the epitome of the subjugation of women, strike back and assert their right to exist in freedom and respect; and Allie, ever tuned to the voice in her head, rejects the older nuns’ blind certainty that the skein represents some dark expression of Satan. Even as she tries to fit in within the convent, she cannot help but ask why a powerful woman automatically is a manifestation of evil. By that logic, Allie reminds the nuns, God himself would side with the idea that women were inherently inferior. Allie’s message is hopeful, if defiant: “Just as Jesus told the people of Israel that God’s desires had changed, the time of Gospels is over and there must be a new doctrine” (50). 

Thus he mood in this section is jubilant. Tunde feels it as he watches the chaos of women in the streets of Riyadh, concluding, “It is exhilarating. In the streets there are still shouts and crackles and the sporadic sound of gunfire” (66). Even as the celebration goes on in the streets, Tunde makes love with a Saudi woman he meets during the riots. In bed, he allows her “to set the pace.” The sex is mind-boggling to him: [“W]hen she loses control as she finishes she sends a jolt through his buttocks and across his pelvis and he barely feels pain at all, so great is the delight” (67).

The only caveat to the jubilant mood of this section is delivered in the quiet moment when Margot touches the streetlamp and sends her entire neighborhood into darkness. This is an exercise of power in the name of power. Margot is more curious than threatened. She feels the bone-deep rush of the surge. That moment suggests the addictive power of the skein, marking the narrative’s first indication of the movement toward The Cataclysm. As Margot afterwards tells her campaign manager, “I’ve got big plans” (79).

In the next chapter, Eve tells her global followers via an Internet feed, “Do not be afraid. If you trust, then God will be with you. She has overturned heaven and earth for us” (92). In this section, the tone of the women’s movement becomes more urgent and more disturbing. What begins as a long-overdue opportunity for women to finally challenge the assumption that their gender is inferior emerges as a crusade that is uncompromising and determined to use the power of the skein to enhance the rise of women. This section marks the beginnings of the movement toward apocalypse.

Each manifestation of the skein in this section is both benevolent and sinister. As women begin to appreciate the magnitude of the skein, they see the skein less as an opportunity for equality and more as a chance for dominance. Allie’s rhetoric, for instance, recalls Christian writings that speak of the hope for a new world of cooperation, or what she calls the “great work of making justice in the world” (92). Despite the noble rhetoric, Allie kills a nun who objects to the assumption that the skein is an instrument of righteousness. In killing the nun, Allie reveals an unsuspected capacity for ruthless plotting. She must eliminate those who question her authority. This is a far cry from using the skein as an instrument of justice.

Margot Cleary reveals a similarly disturbing pattern that suggests benevolence but hints at something sinister. In watching her own daughter struggle with controlling the power of the skein, Margot proposes a sort of day camp where younger girls, uncertain how to direct the energy, can learn with older women who have developed more control over the power. It seems like a community-minded project established in good faith. Yet like Allie, Margot harbors bigger ambitions. In mobilizing the camps, she effectively creates a woman’s army. By separating them from the larger culture, Margot creates allegiance to women. Her critics view the NorthStar camps as a paramilitary organization. As one critic suggests, “You’re going to use public money to train basically terrorist operatives to use their weapons more effectively” (99).

However, Margot is undeterred. To circumvent the objection, Margot raises money for the camps on social media. Within a week, she collects more than a million dollars. It is on the strength of that tenacious decision to establish the camps that Margot is touted as a potential gubernatorial candidate. She wants greater power and now has a potential army being assembled. That reality is juxtaposed against Tatiana Moskalev’s coup. Her subsequent declaration that she will lead women to their own country sets up the new assertion of women’s power. The global community is alarmed. The region is already a tinderbox. Female empowerment suddenly hints at a menacing threat to global stability.

It is Roxy, however, who emerges most dramatically as both heroic and sinister. She is taken by the idea of God as a mother and of long-suffering Mary as the central figure of Christianity. But the inspirational message of Mother Eve’s Christian revisionism facilitates Roxy’s return to the London underground and her idea that, like many physical phenomena, the skein may be heightened through potent pharmaceuticals. Imagine, she says, the skein exponentially enhanced by a spur of, say, cocaine. She returns to London not to advocate for a new world order centered on respecting women but to advocate ways to use her father’s drug operations to create, mass produce, and sell a drug able to enhance the experience and power of the skein. Given the NorthStar Camps and Tatiana Moskalev’s increasing aggressive rhetoric, Roxy’s idea of enhancing the skein sets the stage for a spiral into cataclysm.